What to look for when buying a C4 Chevrolet Corvette (1984-1996)

in this video I'm going to give you all the things that you should look out for if you are shopping for a C4 or 4th generation Chevrolet Corvette so stick around [Music] let me begin with a brief overview of the C4 or 4th generation Corvettes they were offered for sale from 1984 through 1996 Chevrolet built over 358 000 of them of which about 74 000 were convertibles that means there's still a lot of them on the road and a lot of them on the market for you to purchase and you're going to find them in all different types of conditions now this happens to be my 1995 model that I picked up less than a year ago it's got 38 000 miles on it and so let's begin with going around the outside of the car and let me show you some of the things you're going to want to watch out for so this happens to be the seventh Corvette that my wife and I have owned going all the way back to my first one in 1996 and so one of the things that I've learned over the years of course is that that sloping hood of the Corvette is one that new Corvette buyers sometimes have a hard time judging the distance when they're parking the car and if you get it wrong you end up in this situation so there's a little bit of damage here and a little bit of damage you can see here and that's because this car has been bumped into something so one of the first things you're going to want to take a look at is the front end to see if there's any damage the next item I suggest you take a look at is those pop-up headlights while they are wonderful they are also prone to having the motors go bad and so you're going to want to make sure you put them up and down a couple of times and make sure they flip properly that you don't have any grinding sounds from them otherwise you are replacing those headlight Motors foreign now let's talk tires if you are going to buy a C4 that has low mileage such as this one one of the things you're going to want to inspect is how old the tires are not just the amount of tread depth that's left so tires come with a DOT date code on them that will give you an indication of the age of the tire and so when I purchased this car the rears I discovered were from 2002 and the front tires were from 1998 on one corner and 2000 on the other one and the way I could judge that is if it's from 2000 or newer it generally has a four digit number the first two digits are going to be the week of the year the last two digits is going to be the year that it was manufactured and so tire manufacturers will tell you if they're more than five or six years old it is recommended you replace them no matter how much tread is still left on that tire the side walls break down they dry rot you just you don't want to take any risks so the first thing I did when I bought this car was take it to a tire shop and put four new tires on it if the car you're looking at is from 1992 through 1996 the vast majority of them are powered by the LT1 V8 such as this one the one exception is the lt4 which was a 30 horsepower bump and similar to the LT1 only available in 1996. anyways the problem with these cars is the opti-spark now the opti-spark is an optical distributor it's mounted on the front of the engine I'd show it to you but it's kind of buried under here and it's hard to see and the problem was it was designed in such a way that the water pump is above it and the Opti spark is susceptible to moisture and so if your water pump fails that can fail the opti-spark and now you're replacing them both and that is a very expensive undertaking now generally you will know when you test drive the car if you may have an issue with an opti-spark if it has a hard time starting if it stumbles if it just doesn't sound right I would walk away it doesn't necessarily mean it's the optuspark but on these later models it's quite possible that could be what the problem is this particular car is equipped with the selective ride control so on the inside of the vehicle you have a dial that you can change the suspension settings from tour to sport to Performance now when the system works it's great the problem is getting parts to replace these and we're talking about this mechanism here that attaches to the shock that can cost you 750 dollars per corner of the car in order to replace it and so sometimes you will find cars that were equipped with Selective ride control where a previous owner once the system failed actually replace those with just standard shock absorbers when it comes to the air conditioning system if you're looking at one of the last three model years 94 95 96 then the system runs on the R134A refrigerant and so if you needed to charge the system it's certainly not going to be a problem but if you're looking at an older model they ran on the R12 more commonly referred to by the brand name Freon and of course Freon was something that was banned back in the 80s because of the damage to the ozone layer now it is illegal to manufacture Freon but it is not illegal in order to purchase it and use it on your car so if the system does not have a leak you can still go on places like eBay and find old cans of freon R12 that you can put in the system but if the system is not working and has a leak then you're going to end up having to convert the system over to R134a and that could be an expensive process so please keep that in mind beginning in 1989 you could order a low tire pressure monitoring system for the car now this is an early generation product it was a band that was strapped on the inside of the rim with a sensor and they had a tendency to fail I would tell you if you've got a check engine light that comes on your dash that says tpsw or something of that effect that generally tells you it had the tire pressure warning system and it's probably because one of those sensors has failed while I'm under the hood here I'll just mention that with any used car you take a look at of course you want to check all the lights and turn signals and all those sorts of things so when I bought this car I happen to notice that this particular under hood light is not functioning so I took this glass piece off and put bulbs in it but unfortunately the problem apparently is a wiring issue so that's one of the things I'm going to have to chase down and Repair on this vehicle if you're looking at a coupe the target top will either be body colored or in this particular case this car came with one of the transparent roof panels and so if you're looking at one that has one of these transparent panels you're going to want to look all the way around it to make sure there aren't any cracks now if you happen to be looking at a convertible it's a manual convertible top put the top up and inspects the top for its condition check the rear window in that convertible top to make sure it doesn't have any damage if you're looking at buying a coupe you're going to want to take a close look at the weather stripping and so it has a tendency to dry out and rot and you can see I've got a little damage here but one of the common areas on the coop is right here you see where that weather stripping is separated it looks almost like someone put a piece of duct tape in there to try and keep it together and that becomes a leak you wash the car and the water sprays up into the rear and so I've already got an estimate to have that replaced and if I walk around to the other side you'll see I have the same problem over here not quite as bad but you can see where it's separated and so the part alone is maybe 150 bucks plus labor in order to get it installed if you're getting a coupe check that the rear glass goes up when you push the button on the remote control these struts should make the glass go up automatically if it doesn't want to go up on its own that means these struts likely need to be replaced the car is equipped with a power antenna and so this is one of the things you're going to want to make sure that it goes up and down properly and so I'll turn on the stereo and it should automatically go all the way up make sure it doesn't get stuck along the way and when I turn the stereo off it should go down properly and retract completely back into the body when you open the car especially on the driver's side pay special attention to the door panel notice on this vehicle the door panel is separated here and we have taken the door panel off and tried to reset it and it's going to have to be a fixed to get it back in place and so I've got a shop actually that's going to repair that for me and so this is a common problem when that door has been open and shut so many times this door panel will have a tendency to pop loose now that you have the driver's door open take a look at the door panel here and here on the door sill just to see if people have been dragging their feet across this where it's worn out the carpeting or it's put marks in the door panel and I will tell you that at some point in time in this car's history the a previous owner bought these plastic covers that actually go over that carpet which is actually a great idea that helps to prevent that wear from dragging your feet back and forth now let's talk about how you get in and out of the car now getting in is not really the issue you can just kind of fall into place the problem is many people will have a tendency when they get out of the car they want to use the steering wheel kind of as a brace to help them climb out well the problem with that is there are bushings in this steering column that can fail so when you sit down in the car for the first time grab that steering wheel and see how much play it has if you're feeling play in that steering wheel when the car is off and it's sitting in a parking lot like this that may tell you you've got bushings here in the steering column that are going to have to be replaced and so one of the things that you have to kind of teach yourself when you own one of these is you want to take your feet out and then you either want to grab here on the a-pillar or I push off here on the door sill and that's how I get in and out of the car now once you're in the car there's a couple of things to look for one is you want to inspect the dash make sure there are no cracks in the dash before you get in you might want to check the seats now the earlier models did offer a cloth interior but all your later models were all leather and so especially this side bolster of course has a tendency to have wear or damage to it so and then once you're in here you also want to take a look at the dash as far as the digital readout now if you're looking at an earlier model it was an all digital readout and those Lighting in that had a tendency to fail and so there are people now who will refurbish those and put new LED lighting in them for you but that can be rather expensive to have done and so you're going to want to inspect that and see what the clarity of the readout is on a later model like this 95 I'm in it only has digital in the center that shows me my speed and so you're obviously going to want to inspect that as well to make sure that it looks correct and doesn't have any dead areas to it now an old car like this has a whole lot of controls to it and a whole lot of buttons and so take your time and go through all of them you've got power door you got in this case I've got power seats I've got a Bose upgraded stereo system which has got all kinds of controls if you're looking at a car like this that has CD and cassette make sure to bring a CD and a cassette with you so that you can test those and make sure that they work properly because anything you find that has to be repaired obviously is another expense it's something else that you can negotiate with the owner of the vehicle to give yourself a better discount if you're buying a coupe you're going to want to make sure it has the tool for removing your target top and that tool should be in the center glove box so when I come in here and I open the glove box and if you look around in the back you'll notice there is where the tool is mounted in the glove box and so you're going to want to inspect and make sure the tool is there so that you can remove your target top and enjoy the warm weather there's one other small item I want to point out here in the interior and I'm going to look up at the sun visors you notice I have a binder clip on this sun visor here and the reason for that is if I take it off you see what happens it flops around and it's true on the other side as well and I think this may be a common problem that the cardboard or whatever they used is the structure in here it must have a seam or something that just lets go now you can obviously buy replacement sun visors and and swap that out but that's one of the things I haven't gotten around to yet I want to wrap up by adding a couple of obvious items one is ask for maintenance records I was very fortunate when I bought this car that not only do I have the records from the owner who had it for the five years before me but he had gotten records from the owner before him so I now have 13 years worth of Maintenance records so I know how well the car had been maintained also ask how many sets of keys they have as you can see here I was fortunate that my seller had both sets of original keys and so I managed to get both sets of keys if you're watching this video and you're a C4 owner let me know what I forgot is there something I should have added drop me a comment below and tell me what should have been included in this video my name is Tom Stroup and you've been watching find the right road if you enjoyed this video please click the like button and consider subscribing to my channel thanks and we'll catch you next time

Channel: Find the Right Road

Views: 88,901

Keywords: C4Corvette, Corvette, Chevrolet Corvette, 1984 Corvette, 1985 Corvette, 1986 Corvette, 1987 Corvette, 1988 Corvette, 1989 Corvette, 1990 Corvette, 1991 Corvette, 1992 Corvette, 1993 Corvette, 1994 Corvette, 1995 Corvette, 1996 Corvette, LT1, Optispark, What to look for C4

Id: 6axkB4rJIVg

Length: 14min 20sec (860 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023